RETURN OF THE FRANCISCAN EMBASSY. 177 ambassador, until they have had vengeance. The fourth reason was, that we apprehended they might have been carried off from us by force ; and the fifth and last, that their coming could have served to little purpose, since they had but to carry letters to the Pope and other princes, which were in substance the same as those with which we were charged." On the 13th of November the papal envoys were admitted to a farewell audience with the Khan, and his letter was delivered to them, sealed with the imperial seal, which, according to Piano Carpini, had a motto thus trnaslated by the Russian goldsmith Come, " God in heaven, and Couyouk-Khan on earth. Power of God. Seal of the Emperor of all men." The envoys were afterwards conducted to an audience of the empress- mother, who gave each of them a pelisse of fox skin, with the hair outwards, and a robe of other stuff. The Franciscans followed, on their return, the route by which they had come. It was winter, and the poor monks had mostly to sleep upon the snow, or in a hole that they had scraped for themselves in the ground. " It was a bare country without any trees, and often in the morning we found ourselves quite covered by snow that the wind had drifted on us." * They returned to Kiew on the 9th of June, 1247, and John de Piano Carpini had the joy of finding that some proposals tending to re-union with the Church of Rome, which he had made to certain princes and bishops of Russia, had been accepted. After this, traversing Rus- sia, Poland, Bohemia, and Germany, he passed the
- Bergeron, p. 133.
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